Description: "The Ball" is a perfect parable about the national pastime. It chronicles the distinctly American path of Mark McGwire's record-setting seventieth home run ball -- from the moment it was stitched in a Rawlings factory in Costa Rica and shipped (eventually) to St. Louis; to the moment it left the hands of Montreal rookie hurler Carl Pavano and collided with ash-burning force against McGwire's "Big Stick" bat; to the moment it was descended upon by more than a dozen scientists and researchers working on the heralded Human Genome Research Project (and caught by one); through the staggering offers that cascade onto the potential and actual catcher; to the moment it is won at auction for $3.5 million dollars by a comic-book maven. It introduces the first sports agent to reach the stratosphere in representing inanimate objects, and visits along the way the machinery of modern herodom, the function of the Internal Revenue Service, the contributions of Ozzie Smith, the role of DNA, and the truth about Babe Ruth's bats. Shot through with colorful characters, timely reporting, high drama and rich baseball history, it is must-reading for anyone interested in what drives our various marketplaces -- and collective fantasies -- at the end of the twentieth century.

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